Stage
by DeadManSeven
Summary: The package arrived on a Thursday. Luna was able to tell instantly as it soared over the tables at breakfast, borne by some anonymous owl, that it was for her. It was the way her father wrapped packages.


_All the world's a stage,  
And all the men and women merely players..._

- Shakespeare

------------------

**'Stage'**

The package arrived on a Thursday. Luna was able to tell instantly as it soared over the tables at breakfast, borne by some anonymous owl, that it was for her. It was the way her father wrapped packages.

She set aside her breakfast to clear a space for the owl, and waited patiently for it to land. Breakfast could wait a little while longer. It happened every day, after all.

Inside the package were glasses, and a note. She inspected the glasses first. They were not like Spectrespecs. They looked slightly heavy, and on lifting them up Luna found she was right. They reminded her a little of the goggles a crazy alchemist might wear in a picture in a Muggle children's story. She set the goggles back in the package, and unfolded the note. Inside was a short line - it didn't have enough words to call it a full sentence - in her father's spidery handwriting.

'These may not see the future,' the note read. So it was a puzzle. That was okay. Luna liked puzzles.

She folded the note and set it beside the box, took out the glasses, and put them on. There was a strap that held them in place; the kind a person would have to reach their arms up behind their head to tighten properly, and this is what Luna did.

Her vision was shaded with the colour of a gemstone. Amethyst? A kind of quartz? These were closer than saying everything she saw was now tinged with purple, but that was correct in its own way alsoenough for Luna to settle on. Big thick black bars hovered around the edge of her eyesight, and she moved her head about and focused on them rather than what was in front of her for a little while. It reminded her of horses.

Luna started taking in the Great Hall. It was full of people - purple people, with differing shades of purple hair. She could see them all perfectly clearly - over at the other table there was Ginny and her brother, who was in the middle of a meal of purple eggs. On Ginny's other side was a boy, and for a length of time much shorter than a second Luna was unable to tell who he was because he was not purple but had all his proper colours about him, and then she was

_watching_

_remembering_

_foreseeing_

_Colin, in a room that is only red. Red for making the pictures come out right - they first go in the solution that would turn them from blank nothingness into pictures, and then into a second solution that would take them from being regular pictures into moving pictures. Colin, who is no longer a boy but a young man who still looks like a boy, is wearing a tie and his sleeves are rolled back. He is hanging a picture on one of the suspended lengths of wire that cross the room at just above head height. There is a look of deep concentration on his face, and some of that solution that turns nothingness into pictures on his fingers. His old camera sits on a stool in the corner, unloaded and looking strangely naked. He has others, even a digital that is not top of the line (but still quite respectable) that came from his mother on a birthday that he uses to shoot landscapes sometimes, but the old camera, his first camera, is his favourite. It is like an old pair of shoes._

_There is a noise and Colin's eyes dart behind him, because he has told him, told him told him a thousand times, shut the outside door to the darkroom before opening the inside door and doesn't want to tell him again, but there is no white light spilling into the red and Colin relaxes. Another young man enters:, he is taller than Colin and looks older, and he does not like to move around in the darkroom very much because those wires are always just at the right height and the wrong place for him to stumble into them by accident. He has dark hair. Are these the new ones, he asks, and Colin says they are, and he says that they look great, Col, and he is genuinely impressed.__He notices the other pictures, the older pictures that have almost dried after their time in the second solution, and he asks, hey, are those the ones of us, and there is excitement in his voice that pulls Colin's whole face into a smile. He steps past Colin and exaggerates ducking his head down and looks at one of the older pictures, where two figures stand side by side, occasionally looking back at the city behind them, taking a step backwards, and gesturing to the invisible picture-taker. The image skips a little in places, but that will clear up. The city is Paris. The pair watch themselves get photographed like tourists - which they were - from the viewing platform of the Eiffel Tower a couple of times, and then the taller man with the dark hair guides Colin with the tie he is wearing and kisses him, kisses him in the red light, and Colin asks what was that for when they break, and he responds with do I need a reason?_

Luna came back to the Great Hall with a start. Time had not passed - Ronald's fork was still loaded with the same purple egg. Was that the future? It hadn't felt like a vision or any form of insight that was described in her Divination textbook. It was more like a memory, but it was also unlike one. It was something new.

She looked at Colin again, and he was purple. Luna knew Colin liked photography - did he like boys? Maybe, but then she remembered the note from her father that lay neatly folded beside the open and empty box before her, and thought also maybe not. She didn't know Colin very well; she just sat next to him in Herbology.

Were there other people that were in colour? Luna cast about. There was a ghost at the far end of the hall (if you counted silvery-white as a colour), but she saw (remembered?) nothing about them. She caught a brief flash of something, and turned to it - it was Neville Longbottom, standing up from his place,

_with his hair hanging in his face, and whatever part is visible is covered in blood and bruises and cuts and scars. This Neville wears torn robes with a burn mark on one of the sleeves, and he looks like the Neville that came out of the Department of Mysteries, but this Neville is not just a little defiant but mostly surprised at his own boldness, this Neville has found what gives him strength and turned it into some metal, a cold heavy iron that shields his heart and lives in his eyes. This Neville holds a wand in one hand and a sword in the other and he knows how to wield them both. This Neville stands on a blasted plateau under a black sky and is facing something that has the shape of a man but the soul of a snake, a terrible and ancient reptile filled with poison. He has been through war, the crucible that made him hard and sharp as flint, but here is where the last battle will be fought, where either he will stand and bring the iron of his heart and the steel of his sword to bear on the poison man, or fall and have the world fall with him. He raises the sword, clears the hair from his eyes, and_

said a goodbye to the people he was sitting with, and began walking away. He passed right by Luna (but did not notice her), and Luna imagined for a moment that one of the scars was still on his face - the jagged one that ran down his forehead. He acknowledged Harry Potter and Hermione Granger as he walked past them, themy having come to breakfast slightly late, and they both turned to colour at close enough times so that they were almost the same. First Harry

_stands in front of a blackboard. He leans on a cane, and leans on it with an arm in a complex brace that helps it to move. The magical backlash that crippled his arm, made it so he can feel the change in weather in the bones of his leg, took his right eye, and shattered his wand along with its brother, is not a thing he talks about - its presence is simply there, for his students to know about._

_His voice is calm but he keeps the attention of the whole class. The Dark Arts, he is saying, are complex and subtle in their trickery. There are the obvious uses of Dark magic - the spells whose only purpose is pain and suffering - that overshadow the true insidious nature of Dark magic. There is magic that is tainted, where not just a single use means instant damnation, but where, over time, will change the disposition of a witch or wizard. They become quick to anger. Prone to violence. They begin harbouring blacker and blacker thoughts until they are completely in the thrall of the Dark. The defence against such magic is not a charm or a counter-curse, but lies within understanding of how the magic itself is tainted, which is why (here Harry's voice raises slightly, as some unidentifiable students have begun whispering amongst themselves) this semester, you will have full access to the restricted section of the library._

_The whispering almost develops into a brief commotion, but this is something Harry is prepared for - every class goes through it, and he is used to it. He waits for quiet to return, passively waiting with his hand on his cane, and when it has he says, now, if any of you feel you are not up to this part of the class, then you must tell me immediately. I cannot stress this point enough. I will be keeping a close eye on all of you (some years this has earned a guffaw or two, but not this year), and if I feel anyone is not acting responsibly, I will remove them. Is that understood, and the muttered chorus of yes, Professor Potter comes back, so different in the last year than in the first year from students, and he taps his cane on the floor and heads for the door and tells his class to leave their things, they will be safe, we're heading straight for the library._

The vision/memory/foresight that followed was close enough to almost overlap, like the two faces of a coin spun on a table.

_Hermione sits at a desk and in front of her is a box with a screen in the front. There are things on that screen - words, mostly, some pictures - and they move on the screen according to esoteric controls that sit also on the desk in front of her. It is clearly a Muggle device, in a Muggle room, in a Muggle house, in a Muggle life. Also in the room is Harry Potter, and he is sat on a couch watching another Muggle device with a screen. This one is a television. It is only functioning at low volume; the sound is quiet enough to hear Hermione operating the many buttons on the other more complicated Muggle artefact._

_All of the house is quiet, as it is occupied by quiet people. Their neighbours are not the kind to have loud parties that run past eleven or to start the mower on the weekends before eight; there are few people that drop by unannounced, and there are no children and no plans for children - not yet, anyway, which is what they always say to their friends. There may be, but if it is so then it will come later; today Hermione will finish her coffee and finish reading the news and join Harry on the sofa and he will turn the sound up and they will find something to watch together and continue with their lives. It is a quiet life, but it is their own._

Luna focused her attention firmly on her own hands. She feared she may be stuck in a continual string of vision-memories, if they continued to come faster and faster. She reached behind her head and loosened the goggles the slightest fraction, and pushed them up onto her forehead, and colours beyond purple came back to the world. She remembered the picture book alchemist she had thought of earlier and made a note not to leave the goggles sitting there for long - she didn't know a lot about alchemy.

Could any of those visions be true? She thought perhaps they all could. Not at the same time, however - the teacher Harry and the non-magical Harry had been close in age. Luna wanted to see more through the goggles to get a better understanding of how they worked, but didn't want to put them back over her eyes with so many people present. She picked up the note, dropped it in the box and folded up the paper it had been wrapped in, dropping that in too. She then closed the box and tucked it under her arm. When she was safely out of earshot of the Great Hall, she pulled the goggles back down. In the windowless corridors, the ever-burning torches looked dream-like.

The first person she saw while walking was Draco Malfoy, who Luna didn't like very much, and he was all purple. He was talking loudly as he rounded the corner, his voice echoing off the stones. He must have been talking to the two big boys that were following him, trying to keep pace - one was

_kneeling with the sleeves of his robes pushed up to his elbows. He is surrounded by candles and there is blood all over his hands. Before him lies an open book, a heavy thing that is old enough to be called a tome, and the body of some animal that has just been killed. The boy, Vincent, does not seem to care. He is, after all, the one who killed it. Just what kind of animal lies before him is impossible to tell, and the only thing preventing it from being a man is the size. What is truly shocking is the meticulous way the animal's insides have been arranged - whether Vincent considers it gruesome or not is a moot point, they all serve a purpose._

_His head is lowered while he checks the diagram in the book and makes a final adjustment. The blood on his fingers is beginning to become tacky. He finally looks up and sees before him not mere remains, but the way of the future, and knowledge floods into his normally slow and cumbersome face, turning it wicked like the smile of a man who will kick at a dog simply because nobody is there to see him do it. In that moment, Vincent understands, understands not just the shape of what is and what will be but understands how all the old magic, dark or light, is loaded with power - colossal, ancient power that has been left untapped because it would burn so many wizards from the inside out, turn them into stupid husks with all the magic and will pounded out of them by the pulsing of the ages. But not him - no, not him. Vincent has crossed over to the Dark, and the expression on his face blooms into one of_

concentration and surprise as he passed her by, but said nothing; Draco had ignored her completely so she mustn't be worth paying attention to right now, and he hurried his step to keep up.

Luna was completely still for a long moment, as she didn't like blood very much, either. She was searching for something else to focus on, and landed on the fact that she was not exactly panicked but just finding a way to contain and distance any emotions from the memory (vision?) so she could examine it later as easily as the others. Setting unpleasant thoughts in a box so they couldn't escape and run wild in the mind was a trick her father had taught her.

While she was doing this, one of the Aurors came around the corner from the other direction. At the beginning of the school year, Luna had been quite interested in the way all four of them held themselves and how it was different from the bearing of either a student or a teacher, so she had followed one of them as he walked his patrol one weekend. He had looked like he had a hard time understanding that Luna just wanted to watch how he walked and that she didn't have some secret motivation, but she supposed that could have been some kind of ruse Aurors were in the habit of using to catch Dark wizards. This was not the same person; it was the young woman with the short hair. Luna looked at her and saw for a second a breed of concern on her face and then saw

_her as she is holding a baby, no older than a year, holding it against her shoulder. She is bouncing a little on her feet as she walks, a bouncy gait that matches the bouncy song she is humming, which is broken with half a curse as she barks one of her shins against the coffee table. I wish you would swear less in front of my child, comes a voice from the kitchen, and she almost rises to retort, respond, shout that it wasn't anything you couldn't read in the paper and she hadn't gotten all the way through it anyway, but she realises he is playing with her, baiting out that response, and she will not rise up to it this time. She'll get him back, though, after bedtime._

_The smell of Remus' cooking is making her more hungry. When was it that he learned to cook, she thinks to herself; men who live on their own don't know how to cook, and as she hums without having to consider the next part of the melody. She thinks that she is lucky; that they are both lucky. It is a thought that comes to her often. She mentions it out loud a lot, most often that she has been blessed with the talent of being able to exist on just a couple of hours sleep, and to this her husband, her sweet quietly playful rock of a husband, will tell her that if she drops something and breaks it people will just assume she is being herself and hasn't gone without a good night's rest, and she will swat him on the arm but not be able to control the smile on her face that she should be able to bend as she wants, but she also thinks she is lucky when he is cooking, when he gets up in the night to deal with one of the kids and lets her just roll back into sleep, when she watched his face look like it was glowing from inside somewhere when she said their daughter had his eyes. The war took so much from everyone they knew, and they are both know they are very lucky to be_

doing here?" she asked. Luna's confusion must have shown on her face, since the Auror woman further clarified: "Alone in the corridors, while everyone is eating."

Luna searched for a way to explain her being here that was concise, and feared for a moment she wouldn't be able to find one, when the Auror woman put a hand to her temple and said to her, "Sorry, I'm not a professor, am I? I shouldn't be telling you what to do. Forget I said anything," and added in what seemed to be an afterthought, "Where'd you get those goggles?"

"From my father," Luna said.

"You tell him I want a pair. They look pretty cool." The Auror woman smiled and began walking back the way she had came. Luna watched her go, and remembered that, in the vision, her hair had been almost the same colour as it was now in the goggles. She made a note to remember this to examine if it had any special meaning.

She had also said the goggles had looked pretty cool. How did she look with these on? Maybe it was cool. There was a bathroom a corner and two corridors away, and those had mirrors. She could check. On the way there, she heard students leaving the Great Hall, which meant classes were starting soon, but this would only take a moment. Two moments, at most, and Luna judged she had access to half a dozen.

The bathroom was empty. In the mirror she thought she looked mostly the same, except her eyes were obscured by the big lenses through the way the light was hitting them, so she turned her head to aim the glare in another direction, and saw her own eyes in the mirror as she leant over the basin, saw them in brilliant colour, and saw herself

_with a heavy bag almost the same size as she is strapped to her back, with a walking stick and heavy boots, walking through a forest where there was no path_

and

_lying on a bed without her clothes, sunlight streaming from the window across her body, as Dean concentrates in the corner with his pad and pencil_

and

_running through a cobblestone back-alley, holding the hand of a boy with red hair as she drags him with her, and they are both laughing as the rain comes down_

and

_finishing the drawing of the insect she has Stunned, because she hates the idea of putting pins through them and she has become quite good at copying the details with the sharp little pencil_

and

_dancing with Draco Malfoy in the snow, in the moonlight_

and

_kissing Neville Longbottom in greenhouse five_

and

_being kissed by Ron Weasley down by the pond at the Burrow_

and

_crying as a train leaves the platform, and the steam ripples her dress_

and

_holding Ginny's hand and kissing her by the lake, under the shade of a tree_

and

_telling Harry Potter how he was a little like a knight or a prince in a children's story, and that there were lots of women who, when they were little girls, said they would marry Harry Potter when they grew up_

and

she understood the goggles, understood the note, understood the riddle: it wasn't _may_ not but _may not_, _can not_, _will not_ show the future. Everything she saw or remembered was not true, could not be true, would never come true. The visions were all a future that would never happen. The riddle solved, she loosened the goggles and let them slip to her neck and flicked her hair out of the band, and resolved to write to her father as soon as she could.

As she walked to her first class she mused that, even if nothing the goggles showed could happen, it was still interesting.

_09-04-14_


End file.
